


Diamonds

by secretlyasummers



Category: X-Men, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretlyasummers/pseuds/secretlyasummers
Summary: Two telepaths with diamond forms have influenced Scott Summers' life.





	Diamonds

**Author's Note:**

> Jack Winters is from X-Men 39-42.

In their mind, Emma’s hands were never cold. Despite her name, her demeanor, Scott always felt her, through gloves and playacted costumes. Not just as a mutant, but diamond too. In the scene that formed when Scott half-closed his eyes, the diamond glittered and held and stayed unyielding; it was never cold.

_Scott recoiled as an organic diamond fist hit him, his glasses cracking and shattering, but there was no ~~where~~ one else to go to._

He had taken a second to wonder why. Emma knew what diamond was like, Scott knew what diamond was like, and for all her artifice and arrogance and performative femininity and calculated indifference, Emma wasn’t nearly as good a liar as she thought she was. Scott stopped wondering.

_After Genosha, at the mansion, Hank had said something about distant relations and radiation similarities and Cybero’s old archives. Cyclops wasn’t listening._

It wasn’t real, of course. That was what Scott had said to himself as he and Emma had been together while Scott briefed or flew or taught. A passing daydream, thoughts of infidelity rather than the reality thereof – and while it wasn’t fair and Scott knew that too he couldn’t help but look at Logan when the guilt hit hard – and a daydream never really was true. When that glittering, gloved hand touched his cheek and he felt warmth rather then cold, Scott knew that all too well.

_It hadn’t been his fault. Charles, and later Jean, and much much later Alex and then later Corsair had been firm about that. Scott was never sure if he believed that._

Scott had been young. It was before Charles, and after Milbury Orphanage, when what was real and was imagined still shifted and changed in his mind. Scott had thought that whatever he was, he was the only one. Jack – Jack Winters, the Living Diamond – had found him, had been the only one like him, the only mutant. With a telepathy far cruder, and far more painful than the Professor’s, Jack had commanded him. And whether by compulsion or fear or loneliness or whatever, Scott had obeyed. They had committed crimes and empowered Jack. Among other things.

_Jack’s hands were always cold._

The Professor had saved him. (Charles had saved all of them, Scott perhaps more literally then the others.) Jack died, Scott came to the mansion and all was well. But it never stopped feeling like Scott’s fault. Like whatever Jack had done Scott could have stopped it if he had been stronger or smarter or better prepared – if he had been Cyclops rather then Scott Summers. Cyclops would never have been hurt where Scott was.

_Scott had wondered once what made him so tantalizing to telepaths, even before the Phoenix came the first time. He wondered again after he found out about Sinister._

After Genosha, after Erik went mad and Jean . . . passed, after Alex and Logan and Rachel and Bobby stopped talking to him, after they brought Kitty to the team and rebuilt the mansion, Emma tried it in reality. It was the second or third time they had been together, in reality rather then passing thoughts, and she transformed into diamond before the act. Emma had been cold too.

_Scott had realized after the fact that she literally couldn’t enjoy it either, and what that said about Emma herself revealed likely more then she intended._

Emma hadn’t asked when Scott recoiled. The former White Queen of the Hellfire Club wasn’t stupid, and she knew when to back off, and when to push. She just returned to flesh, and they said meaningless niceties until they both went to sleep. Scott hadn’t let her in his mind that night.

_Jean would have asked. Scott didn’t know whether that was better or worse._

Scott had only fought back once, against Jack. It was before he had been comfortable using his powers, and it had ended poorly, to say the least. For the longest time, he had had a long scar by his eyebrow, where a piece from his shattered glasses had cut a long gash. (It was gone now, a product of the Phoenix or Shi’ar or Elixir or someone.) But those nights, after Jean and with Emma, Scott had felt a phantom hurt from there, too. It was like the fall, or Gabriel, or Milbury – memories that he preferred not to dwell upon.

_Many of those scars had been removed over the years. Physical, by the various healers and machines, and psychically, papered over by the Professor’s benign interventions._

Emma, in her diamond form, was like one in nature. Unfaceted, uncut, a diamond as they formed. Jack had been artificial, fake, a series of harsh lines and corners. His telepathy had been like that too – harsh, a battering ram, breaking into his thoughts and shattering what little defenses he had then.  Emma on the other hand, was subtler, taking note of who had done what, where, and how, making careful marks and notes, shuffling and reordering only where need be.  Maybe it was simply because Scott was older now, able to better feel when someone was rooting around in his brain, but he thought that Emma at least cared about the locked doors in his mind.

_Of course, he knew that Kitty and who knows how many others thought that Emma was controlling him, so really what did he know?_

He knew they were talking behind his back, the whole time. That he hadn’t cared about Jean, that Emma had tricked him or stolen him, that he hadn’t changed from who he was with Madelyne, or the Phoenix. Scott didn’t care. (That was a lie, he supposed. Scott acted like he didn’t care, but it did matter.) Emma lied and pretended and put up walls, but for all she was and all she wasn’t Emma was broken in so many of the same ways as he was. 

_That was one of the things he remembered from the Phoenix, when he had lost control. That even as they fought, Emma’s diamond had been warm._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to drop a comment.


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